


your watch has ended (go in peace)

by Tiara_of_Sapphires



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mortality, spoilers to dimitri and dedue's paired ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-20
Updated: 2019-12-20
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:08:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21727279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tiara_of_Sapphires/pseuds/Tiara_of_Sapphires
Summary: Dedue couldn't let him go, even now.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Dedue Molinaro, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 82





	your watch has ended (go in peace)

**Author's Note:**

> Listen, sometimes, you just gotta write something that hurts.  
> [Big thanks to celia (crossingwinter) for looking this over!](https://archiveofourown.org/users/crossingwinter/pseuds/crossingwinter)  
> Enjoy!

Those who didn't know better called Dedue’s fate worthy of the greatest love stories. The king’s right hand, the king’s consort, unable to leave him, even after death. Dedue thought otherwise. It was _his_ task. It wasn’t just out of respect and responsibility to the former king of Faerghus, but out of love and affection for a man long gone.

The reality was less grand than the sensationalized rumors.

He used to stand by the grave, but his joints made that impossible. Instead, he sat beside the headstone. Sometimes he would read, sometimes write letters to their children and friends of old. Most of the time, he just stared into space with a somber expression.

He ate little, slept even less. The cottage that stood just next to the gravesite was big enough to house a bed, toilet, and tiny kitchenette. It was all he needed. His greater task remained outside that paltry space.

His children would insist that he was only facilitated his own demise, and he couldn't exactly argue otherwise.

“Dedue?”

The familiarity of her voice had him starting, as if he had seen a ghost. He hadn’t heard her approach.

Byleth hadn’t aged. She had painted her face to give herself crows’ feet and wrinkles, but her former students knew better. He envied her, in a way. If he never died, he would be able to keep watch over his beloved until the end of time. The grave would never fall to ill-repair if Dedue was always there to tend to it.

Dedue shifted where he sat. His body creaked.

“Hello, Archbishop.”

She smiled gently at him. “You know, I’m emeritus. And I have insisted that you call me Byleth for years.”

He nodded. “Very well, Byleth.”

He didn't make any move to stand and she didn't make any move to sit. It had been years and the bonds of familiarity had weakened. No matter what, they were still friends.

“I saw Rodrigue,” she mused. “He looks so much like Dimitri, but with your hair and eyes.”

He really did. Feats of magic and surrogacy allowed for heirs to Faerghus’ throne, sharing features and blood of the king and king’s consort.

Rodrigue Lambert was the first. Laila, the second, resembled more Dedue’s sisters than any resident of Faerghus. The twins, Rohan and Leda, were the perfect medium between their fathers’ appearances.

They spoke about Faerghus and the children for a while, Byleth still standing. She had visited the twins in Duscur the month prior and eagerly recounted the changes that had occurred since the two had assumed leadership over restoring the war-torn land.

“How’s Isabel?” he wondered.

The mention of her daughter had Byleth smiling. “She’s good. She looks like Flayn when I first met her.”

He nodded. “I’m glad you and Seteth found each other. Immortality suits you.”

While the truth was hidden from everyone else in Fódlan, the Blue Lions knew. She had an unaging husband and child, herself unaging. While he didn't delude himself into believing that her life was perfect and conflict-free, he envied her.

Byleth knelt in front of him, watching him, somehow seeing through him.

“How are you holding up?”

A lot of people asked them that. The children asked constantly, sending letters in droves to see if their father was okay, if he was still hanging on. Rodrigue visited almost twice a week, but he was often unable to get the older man to stray far from the gravesite.

Dedue was holding on, of course. His watch wasn’t over. He couldn't leave now.

“I miss him.”

She stretched out her arms and he leaned in. He hadn't noticed that his vision had blurred with unshed tears. Her arms folded around him, pressing him close, and he shattered like glass.

Dedue had refused to cry after the funeral. He had wept plenty as Dimitri began to slip away and after he passed. He wept alone, he wept with his children, with old friends. He knew if he had gotten into the habit of crying, he would never stop.

Now, he didn't know why now it was different. Maybe it was because every time he saw a horse, he thought of the last time Dimitri rode one. He had been so weakened by his illness that he almost fell off and needed assistance, but there was something so beautiful in his smile.

Maybe it was because whenever he awoke from his fitful sleeps he would expect Dimitri snoring right beside him only to feel so cold when he remembered that Dimitri was sleeping under the earth a stone’s throw away from his cottage.

She shushed him gently but it took everything that he had not to howl like a wounded animal.

It had been years since Dimitri had taking his last rasping breath in his arms and still every morning it felt as if the wound was ripped open to bleed.

“I wish I could go to him. I wish I had followed him.”

They sat together for a long time, Byleth joining in his misery, until the crying stopped.

She pressed a kiss to his forehead. “Shall I visit again, old friend?”

Dedue shrugged. The flurry of tears left him drained. “I am in no position to refuse, but your company is appreciated.”

She stroked her hands over the grass around him and tiny flowers bloomed. “For Dimitri. He never was a fan of flowers, but I think he would’ve liked them.”

Dedue nodded wordlessly. Dimitri only liked large rosebushes, like the ones that covered the memorial grounds.

Byleth left him alone and Dedue sat until sunset.

* * *

* * *

A week passed.

Rodrigue and Laila visited, replacing the food that had gone bad in their shelves. They sat with their father next to the fireplace, speaking little. The twins were in Duscur, tied up in their responsibilities of liaisons and leaders of the recovering nation.

When the children left, didn't quite feel like a goodbye, but when Rodrigue left to return to his duties and Laila to her underlings at the Officer’s Academy, it felt strangely like they wouldn’t speak again for a long time.

He couldn't bring himself to eat any of the food the following day. Instead, he slowly made his way from the short distance between his little cottage and the grave.

It had been raining a lot recently, but today the sky was clear and bright.

He set his blanket on the ground, set a sunhat over his head, and sat down, leaning heavily against the headstone.

Everything was so heavy. He didn't have much need to sleep, so he didn't understand why. Perhaps he should’ve brewed some tea to perk himself up. Regardless, someone would wake him up if he ended up falling asleep.

He did doze for an hour, making tiny sketches of nonsense into a notebook before setting it aside.

With a tip of the finger, he let the brim of his hat rest just above his eyes, shielding him from the sun. He coughed into his hand, once, twice, before sighing. Maybe he really did need some tea.

When footsteps approached, a steady one-two, and stopped nearby, Dedue couldn't help the annoyance that welled up. The groundskeepers usually kept away from the site until after Dedue retired for the night, clearing rubbish and weeds under a lantern’s light.

“What?” he mumbled, not looking up where he stared at his bent knees.

A beat of silence. If this was a groundskeeper, they were clearly not starting their work and simply staring at something. Probably staring at him, checking if he was still breathing.

“Is there something you need?” Dedue snapped, glancing up to give the intruder the evil eye.

Instead, his thoughts, all of his misery and anger, came to a sputtering halt.

While Dimitri had always said that he hated the royal blue uniform, he often wore it from Dedue’s benefit. Dedue loved every bit of it, insisting that Dimitri be buried in it. It was something he thought he would never see again, except in paintings hung in the palace halls.

Dedue’s eyes followed the shiny boots, up the pleated and creased pants and coat and cloak, to a painfully familiar face.

The eyepatch was gone, his right eye healed, leaving two blue eyes staring at him.

Dimitri smiled softly at him from where he stood above him. “Oh Dedue, you were too loyal for your own good, weren’t you?”

That voice alone split his heart in two. A hallucination. A perfect hallucination.

“Anything for you, Dimitri,” Dedue breathed.

He smiled. Dedue missed that smile.

“I missed you,” Dedue rasped. He refused to cry at an apparition, though every fiber of his being wept for this loss. He looked too perfect, from the times before illness had ravaged his body.

“I missed you too.”

A ghost, a hallucination. Dimitri was dead. He watched him be lowered into the ground.

“Are you going to insist that I go and live out the rest of my time here? To travel and see Duscur again?”

Dimitri, during his last days, begged for Dedue to have a life outside of him. Of course, Dedue nodded along, but even then, both other them knew that there was no life for Dedue beyond Dimitri. Their children and grandchildren would fill some of the void, of course, but they were empty without the other.

Instead of reminding him of his failed promise, Dimitri reached for his hands.

“Don’t be ridiculous. Come here, my love.”

Dedue swallowed around a lump and reached out. He expected a confirmation of the lie, the trick of the light, of his aged mind failing him.

Dimitri’s hands were solid in his, as real as anything.

“You’re—you’re here?”

Here, not alive. There was a difference. There had to be a difference. Did Byleth cause a miracle? Could she bring him from the dead?

“Of course,” Dimitri said. “Of course, I’m here.”

Dimitri squeezed Dedue’s larger hands. The callouses from many years of using a lance and riding a horse scraped over Dedue’s similarly rough skin.

He stood, but pain didn't weigh at him. His back no longer bowed. He wanted to take Dimitri into his arms and set his chin on that beautiful blond hair, but he feared if he took too much, Dimitri would disappear, leaving him alone again.

“How strange,” Dedue murmured.

He went to glance back at where he sat, but Dimitri pulled him forward with a jerk, claiming his attention again.

“No, don’t look back.”

Dedue obeyed, allowing Dimitri to lead him forward.

“This is a strange dream,” he mumbled. “I’ll be sad when it’s over.”

Another shake of the head. “You really are being ridiculous, Dedue. You refused to see my intentions before I first declared my love for you, and you are missing my meaning now.”

Dedue blinked at him before sneaking a look behind his shoulder.

He watched himself, his old, bowed self, leaned against the gravestone. His head drooped towards his shoulders, hands limp in his lap. The sunhat covered most of his face, with the exception of a small smile on his mouth.

Finally, he understood. “You are here to take me away.”

“Away, with me, yes.”

Dedue nodded. He couldn't feel sorrow, only happiness. This was the next step, beyond.

“As always, I will follow.”

Like in many years past, they walked side-by-side.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed, as sad as this was!  
> [Here’s my Tumblr! Feel free to follow and drop Blue Lions drabble/fic requests!](https://tiaraofsapphires.tumblr.com/)  
> All feedback is appreciated! Comments/kudos feed me and definitely motivate me to write more stories!  
> Cheers!


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